Burning Bridges… While Standing On Them.

It is understandable that people can have widely differing opinions on a model of firearms, based on their differing experiences with the specific firearm or firearms in that model line that they have personally fired.

After all, neither design nor manufacturing nor quality control are perfect. This variance in quality is especially pronounced when a new model is introduced. That is why most people either refuse to buy “bleeding edge” technologies, or understand that if they do buy something that is new, that they can expect glitches, flaws, and yes, recalls.

I’ve typically refused to be a first adopter of new technology/new models for that very reason when it comes to completely new operating systems (does anyone remember Microsoft Bob?), electronics and computers, cars, and yes, even guns before it became my job to test them.

I’ve also come to understand that when new models of anything are introduced, leaders in the industry media are typically chosen for a “sneak preview.” This is often done by bringing media to a test location, where they are invited to test samples of the product. These are often pre-production samples. Engineers have typically spent a good deal of time tweaking this pre-production samples to get them “just right,” and then they try to pass along the tweaks they’ve made to the production line staff. Sometimes those tweaks are incorporated seamlessly. Other times they are not, or they are implemented haphazardly, so that some products work exactly as designed, and some don’t.

The Remington R51 sample tested by Bearing Arms.

That seems to have been the case with the roll-out of the Remington R51. Members of the media were brought out to Gunsite Academy in November to test-fire the gun, and to a man, every journalist that I’ve read went on the trip gushed with praise for the pistols they tested. These were pre-production guns.

Several months passed between this shoot and the passing of the embargo date (a standard fact of life is that when you get to test cool new things, you sign an agreement not to write about them until the company is ready to make a formal produce release), and the writers who attended were finally able to published their reviews leading up to SHOT Show. The first generation production model pistols themselves were released, and it didn’t go well. MAC had bad experiences with several individual pistols, and while we saw great potential for the pistol in out own review, we also documented many troubling flaws.

As I noted at the time, the pistol I tested and samples that others had reported problems with wasn’t yet ready for “prime time,” but I felt that the design certainly held promise.

My overall first impression is that the Remington R51 is fun to shoot, accurate, attractive, and that it has a lot going for it. It may turn out to be a solid performer at it’s price point once it gets through the normal birthing pains that typically occur in the first year of the release of a new design.

Would I bet my life on it as my primary carry gun? No, not yet. But if the design becomes more reliable over time, I may very well have to consider the R51 as a good option for concealed carry.

This was (and is) my opinion of the early production run R51… take it, or leave it.

Other writers have had different experiences with the R51, and Richard Mann (who I haven’t met) apparently got an R51 that lived up to the promise in the design that so many of the early reviewers reported from Gunsite. I haven’t read his review in the print edition of Shooting Illustrated, but I’m sure I will eventually.

What I have read is one online writer’s reaction to the Mann’s review of the pistol, which was apparently glowing. That Mann wrote a positive review over a sample of the pistol that seemed to work well for him without mentioning the problems others had experienced was apparently enough to send this writer, Nick Leghorn, completely off the deep end.

Bob Owens is the Editor of BearingArms.com.
Bob is a graduate of roughly 400 hours of professional firearms training classes, including square range and force-on force work with handguns and carbines. He is a past volunteer instructor with Project Appleseed. He most recently received his Vehicle Close Quarters Combat Instructor certification from Centrifuge Training, and is the author of the short e-book, So You Want to Own a Gun.
He can be found on Twitter at bob_owens.
https://bearingarms.com/author/bobowens-bearingarms/